1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a movable seat for vehicles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent years have seen the development of various kinds of special service vehicles equipped with movable seats for facilitating boarding and alighting by handicapped persons and others requiring special care, as taught for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Nos. Hei 8-150175 and 2001-37811. The reference '175 teaches a structural arrangement for installing a seat so that it assumes a position outside the vehicle that facilitates boarding and alighting by avoiding steps and assumes a position inside the vehicle where it is near a doorway. The reference '811 teaches an easy-to-use passenger transfer lift installed on the ceiling of an ordinary car.
On the other hand, a diverse range of newly developed humanoid biped robots has appeared. One such robot is described in Assignee's WO 2002/040226. This reference '226 teaches improvement of working efficiency in an existing working space by determining the height of the shoulder joints of a robot at standing from the floor in accordance with the height of the group of objects to be worked on.
The robot envisioned by the reference '226 is about 120 cm tall, which corresponds to the height of a child in the higher grades of elementary school. Since the robot is therefore fairly heavy, it requires the same assistance as a person needing special care, an elderly person, for instance, when being accommodated (or loaded) in a vehicle for transport. The sequence of tasks starting with seating of the robot in the vehicle and continuing on through transport to the destination, and then unseating and unloading upon arrival, particularly the seating and unseating, is hard to carry out without mishap. The technologies of the references '175 and '811 do not provide an adequate solution because they are intended for dealing with only humans and cannot cope with the loading and unloading of a robot.